San Antonio daily light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1886-1907, 1887-01-24
LOVE FOR A DAY.
Y THE AUTHOR OF "DoRA THoRNE,n
"A DEAD HEART" 1.-TWO KISSES"
n 1.-THE FATAL LILIES" ETC.

never saw MIN; out flve minutes AFTER
wards, when l went to the piano, the
music fell from my nerveless hands.
All, woe was mel The first song l
found was this Remember and For
GET"
II sat beside the streamlet;
watched the waters flow,
As we together watched 1t
One little year ago.
The soft rain battered on the leaves,
The April grass was wet
All, folly to rememberl
IT'S wiser to forget.
"The nightingales made musical
June's palace paved with gold;
watched the rose you gave me
Its warm red heart unfold.
But sight Of rose and song of bird
Were fraught with wild regret
IT'S madness TO remember;
'Twere wisdom to forget.
81 stood among the gold corn
Alas, no more KNEW
To gather cleaners measure
OF the love that fell from you
For me no gracious harvest
Would God we ne'er had metl
For, cruel as remembrance is,
IT'S harder TO forget.
"The streamet now is frozen,
The nightingales are fed,
The corn-heds are deserted,
And ev'ry rose is dead.
! ] sit beside my lonely fire,
And pray for wisdom yet,
For calmness TO remember, or
For courage toforget.
There was no sound in the room as
the last notes died away. | knew they
had gone straight to Marks heart, for
he left the group of ladies with whom
he had been talking, and went to one of
the great bay windows. The May sun
had set, and the light was dead in the
sky.
Lady Yorke's voice broke the spell.
She was asking for her favorite, and
the words came readily to me-Virginia
Gabriel's beautiful song Ruby"
~ opened the leaves of book last night
The dust on its cover lay dusk and brown;
As held it towards the waning light
A withered hOw'ret Tell rustling down.
Twas only the wrath of a woodland weed,
Which dear dead hand in the days of old
Had placed 'twixt the pages she loved to
read
At the time when my news of love was told;
And memory sweet, but as sad as sweet,
Swift flooded mine eyes with regretlul tears
As the dry dim harebell SKINNED past my
Recalling an hour from the vanished years.
''once more was watching her deep-fringed
Bent over the Tasso upon her knee,
And the fair face blushing with sweet sur
prise
At the passionate pleading that broke from
All, Ruby, my darling, the small white hand
Z, That gathered the harebell was never my
But faded and passed to the far-ofr land,
And dreamt by the Pickering flame alone.
gathered the flower and closed the leaves,
And folded my hands in silent prayer
That the reaper Death, as he seeks his
sheaves,
Might hasten the hour of our meeting
there"
Was dreaming, or did my own voice
die away in a wall of pain-die in a
long-drawn bitter sobp
Lady Yorke was near me, and saw
tears in her eyes.
Zone more, Miss Chester" she said.
your songs are so sad and so sweet,
they take me out of this world. One
more, if you are not too tired"
had forgiven Mark not very long
since; but the longing was upon me to
make him feel, to pierce his heart with
some little of the anguish which had
pierced mine. Never mind what l suf-
fered, if / could send my words flying
like barbed arrows across the room.
/ looked at him. The handsome pro-
file stood out clearly and distinctly. He
stood gazing though the long window
at the night-sky. All, yes, would
sting him into feeling. And this was
my song
DEAD LOVE.
"Down deep in my heart, in its last calm sleep,
A dear dead love lies buried deep;
clasped it once in a long embrace,
And closed the eyes and yelled the face
never again might see.
breathed no word and shed no tear,
But the onward years looked dark and drear,
And knew, by the throbs of mortal pain,
That a sweetness had fed which never again
Would in life come back to me.
sand dreams of the past, like roses. still shed
Their fragrance around my cherished dead;
While tears that ever are falling unseen,
Like soft summer rain, keepits memory green
As the turf of the churchyard sod.
And, weeping and waiting Ipray and wait
That an angel may open the golden gate;
For think that the love of long ago,
Though cold and dead TO me here below,
viii be mine in the rest of God"
There was little stir in the room
when my song was finished. The last
words rang through my brain-"Will
be mine in the rest of God" | had
touched him. All those other men and
women were nothing to me-Only shad-
ows. They had no identity. l saw
moving figures, heard voices, but to
me Mark was there alone.
saw culver of pain pass over his
face, i had made him feel Then. SO